On Nov. 9, the Associated Students of the University of Arizona discussed updates for various campus programs and an upcoming public forum that could affect student tuition. 

Safe Ride schedule updates 

Safe Ride told ASUA it will be reducing its hours until further notice. Drivers will not be providing services on Friday or Saturday. They will also be closing at 9 p.m. on Mondays instead of 12:30 a.m. 

“This is because they have a lot of internal changes that need to happen and they need all their staff to be focused on that. They are transitioning to a brand new, at-base service in December,” said ASUA Administrative Vice President Lauryn White.

Campus Pantry updates to benefit students 

Campus Pantry, which serves free food to low income students and staff at the UA, is still seeing over 1,600 users per week. Representatives announced that they will be closing on Fridays, partly due to grocery shortages with the upcoming holidays. They have altered their point system to accommodate students by raising the point limit from four to five per student. 

Campus safety discussion 

Campus safety has still been a prevalent discussion for ASUA members. This week, they noted the importance of student insight and said it will help create a safer campus. Last Friday, the student safety task force was launched, the main focus of which is bringing student perspective to the security group that was installed by UA President Dr. Robert C. Robbins. 

Several ASUA members said input and conversation of students is important when dealing with campus safety, and having more representation from different students will bring even more security to this campus. The senators also discussed future meeting possibilities between students to discuss thoughts with each other on this topic.  

Arizona Board of Regents meets to discuss tuition at the university 

ASUA Executive Vice President Nico Nieri-Lang also updated the senators about last Friday’s meeting held with the executive director of the Arizona Board of Regents, John Arnold. The Arizona Board of Regents is the governing body of the three universities in Arizona. They are responsible for providing guidance and making decisions for the schools.

From Nov. 16-18, the ABOR will be meeting on the UA campus in the Grand Ballroom at the Student Union Memorial Center. It will be a public meeting which means that students, faculty and the community are welcome to come to ask questions. One of the topics of this meeting is tuition reform.

Tuition reform is a proposal to simplify the tuition fee process. The issue that is concerning some students is that for certain classes, especially STEM based courses, additional fees are being added on top of the original tuition cost. 

A solution to this issue that many want to move towards is a tier based system. With this system, it depends on what your major is and that will determine how much your tuition will be. 

Students can feel free to express their thoughts on the proposal to the board from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on any of the three meeting days.

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